Anyone but Ivy Pocket

by Caleb Krisp

  I screamed. Ran to the edge of the roof. Miss Frost fell in beside me. The moonlight cast the ground below in a silvery haze. I expected to see Miss Always tumble to her death. But she did not. Her skirt billowed around her. Her arms outstretched. She landed on the graveled driveway in a crouch, then rose to her feet with ease. She took off, running at speed towards a darkened carriage waiting by the wildflower meadow. The door flew open as she approached. She jumped in. The driver whipped the four horses, and they took off, vanishing into the woodlands.

  Miss Frost grabbed my shoulders and held them tightly. “Miss Pocket, listen to me. Do not give Matilda the necklace. It can do great harm. Keep the stone, Miss Pocket. Keep the stone and go from this place. I will find you.”

  “Find me? Find me where?”

  “Do you trust me, Miss Pocket?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped. “I have no idea what just happened. I have no idea who any of you really are. How did Miss Always jump from the roof and not break her neck? Where is this other world you keep talking about? What is happening?”

  “The moment you put on that necklace, you entered a war, Miss Pocket. Now do as I say—take the stone and leave Butterfield Park.”

  She let go of me and jumped onto the parapet, concealing the sword in a sheath fixed to her waist.

  “Where are you going?” I shouted.

  “To kill your friend.”

  Then she jumped. I watched her fly through the air, graceful as a swooping eagle. Her hair came loose and fluttered in the wind like scarlet ribbons. She landed lightly and took off towards the stables. Moments later, a horse bolted out, Miss Frost atop it. She galloped into the woodlands and was quickly lost from view.

  “Wait!” I hollered. “You know more than you are saying! Who was my mother? Tell me who I am!”

  But my words died in the cold night air.

  The guests were gone by the time I came down from the roof. All traces of the locks had vanished. I heard two maids gossiping on the stairs—apparently the ball hadn’t recovered after the business with the cake. The birthday girl had run up to her bedroom and locked the door, only coming out with the promise of a new horse.

  The servants were clearing the great hall as I came down the stairs. A few of the maids gave me devious looks. As if the disastrous ball was all my fault. Perhaps it was. I was past caring about any of it. About riddles without answers. About friends who were really enemies. About a stupid diamond that shone like the sun, glowed like the moon, and teased you with visions. My mother was dead. And if the world wouldn’t give answers about who she was, then I would stop asking.

  I had the Clock Diamond in my pocket and a job to do.

  And I intended to finish it.

  The family was gathered in the library. All except for Rebecca. Lady Elizabeth was stroking Matilda’s cake-crusted hair, whispering in her ear about how one day she would be mistress of Butterfield Hall. Then she would have the last laugh. Lady Amelia was pacing about, looking anxious. They all glanced up when I entered the room.

  “I hate you, Pocket!” hissed Matilda. “I hate you and I wish you were dead!”

  “Of course you do,” I said flatly. “Normally that would be a huge blow—but not tonight. I’m sorry for shoving your face in your birthday cake, Matilda.”

  “I should think so!” snapped Lady Elizabeth.

  “Didn’t I tell you, Matilda?” said Lady Amelia. “Didn’t I say Miss Pocket would be terribly sorry?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t do it days ago,” I said. “Matilda, you’re a stupendously awful girl. You treat Rebecca with monstrous contempt. You browbeat and bully your mother. You bark at the servants. The one person you treat with any regard is Lady Elizabeth, and that’s only because she’s going to drop dead any moment—and you want to make sure she leaves this ghastly estate to you.”

  “Have her flogged!” cried Matilda. “Somebody fetch me a horse whip!”

  Lady Elizabeth used her cane to thump the table. Her beady eyes glowered at me. “Wicked girl! Pack your bags and get—”

  “Don’t worry, I’m going,” I said. “But first there’s something I have to do.”

  I reached into my dress and pulled out the Clock Diamond. It glowed in the palm of my hand—a twinkling of stars, a half-moon. Matilda eyed it greedily. Lady Amelia gasped in wonder. Lady Elizabeth licked her thin, shriveled lips.

  “Someone told me tonight that I must keep the stone,” I said. “That I wasn’t to give it away. But as far as I can tell, it has brought me nothing but trouble.”

  “Give it to me, Pocket,” ordered Matilda. “Hand it to me right now!”

  I held out the necklace. It throbbed in my hand. Like a heartbeat.

  “Take it,” I said.

  I had my back to the library door. So I didn’t see Rebecca slip quietly into the room. She had a gift for moving about unnoticed. Which was how she managed to get so close to me. So close to the diamond.

  Matilda grabbed the stone from my hand. It was a blow to be parted from it. But I did not let it show. Matilda held it up, her eyes swelling with wonder and pride.

  “Oh, before I forget,” I said, “the Countess of Trinity had a message that went with her gift. She wanted me to tell you that the Clock Diamond came with the kind regards of—”

  Rebecca ran at Matilda, snatching the Clock Diamond from her hand. Matilda screamed. Demanded the immediate return of her necklace. But Rebecca wasn’t listening. She raced up the spiral staircase to the balcony above.

  “I have to do this,” she called, her voice shaking. “I have to try it on, just once.”

  “What has come over you, Rebecca?” cried Lady Amelia.

  “Give it back, you nutter!” hollered Matilda.

  Perhaps I was still numb to what was really happening. The pieces of the puzzle were there. Yet I had not put them together.

  But Lady Elizabeth was starting to. She gazed not at Rebecca, but at me. “The Duchess’s message—what was it, Miss Pocket? What did she wish you to say?”

  In the confusion, my mind went blank.

  “Come down this instant!” shouted Matilda, stomping her foot. “It’s my diamond, not yours!”

  “I can’t,” said Rebecca softly. She unclasped the silver chain, gathering each end at the back of her neck. “It’s the only way, do you see?”

  “The only way for what?” I said.

  “The message!” cried Lady Elizabeth, thumping the table with her cane. “What was the Duchess’s message, you impossible girl?”

  My gaze shifted from Rebecca to old Walnut Head. The answer she was seeking was somewhere in the fog of my mind. “She told me to say the Clock Diamond came with the kind regards of . . . of . . .” Then it came to me. “Winifred Farris. With the kind regards of Winifred Farris.”

  Lady Elizabeth’s gasped. “No . . . not Farris. Dear god!”

  I looked up at Rebecca. She was looking back at me. Only at me. She said, “I have to see her again. I have to see her and be with her, just like you did, Ivy. Tell Miss Frost I’m sorry.”

  She let go of the necklace. It dropped and hung around her neck. The Clock Diamond glowed darkly. Then, a faint buzzing. A familiar buzzing. Charging and rippling through the air.

  “Rebecca, no!” cried Lady Elizabeth. “It is a trick. Stop her!”

  The stone’s black glow was smothered by a scarlet light. A pulsing scarlet light. Then yellow. Then red again. Rebecca stumbled. Reached out for the railing.

  The buzzing was like a wasp in my ear.

  “What on earth is going on?” snapped Matilda. “Cousin, give me that necklace now.”

  “Take it off, Rebecca!” shrieked Lady Elizabeth. “Please, take it off!”

  Now a bright mist churned and filled the stone. It was beautifully white, radiating from the diamond like a searchlight. An endless, perfect light.

  Rebecca let out a piercing cry.

  I was already running up the stairs by then. Calling Rebecca’s name again and again. By t
he time I reached the balcony, she had already fallen. The library was suddenly quiet. The buzzing began to fade. I dropped to my knees. Rebecca’s body had withered to a husk, as if her very life force had been pulled from her. Her face was a hollow shell. Her skin, bone dry. Her cheeks, hideously sunken. Her arms, little more than drooping flesh hanging from bones. Her eyes, a milky white. Her hair, brittle as straw. Her lips, yellow and curled into a grin.

  It struck me as heartbreakingly cruel—the sound I heard in the deathly silence of that library. The ticking of the clock on the mantle. Each solemn tick counting the seconds and minutes since Rebecca Butterfield had run out of time.

  18

  Vengeance had come to Butterfield Park. And it had a name. Winifred Farris.

  The body had been taken away. Dr. Longfellow could not explain what had happened to Rebecca. Some sort of rare blood disease, he supposed. We were still gathered in the library as the sun came up. It was as if no one had the heart to go to bed.

  A few questions were asked about what had happened to Miss Frost and Miss Always. I said Miss Always had received bad news about her mother’s health and had rushed to her side. As for Miss Frost, well, who could say? No one seemed terribly bothered that she had vanished.

  The Clock Diamond had been removed from around Rebecca’s neck. It lay upon the table, shining pink like the dawn. Now wasn’t the time for questions. Yet I had so many.

  Lady Elizabeth sat in her favorite chair before the window. Her back to us all. She was the first to speak. “When I heard the Duchess of Trinity’s message—‘from Winifred Farris,’ the name the Duchess longed to have . . . I knew the necklace was not a peace offering, but revenge,” she said.

  The story was simple and rather sad.

  “When we were girls, the Duchess always won—no matter what it was, she won. Luck of the angels, they used to say. I suppose I resented it. She was engaged to Nathaniel Farris, the handsomest young man in the county. Everyone believed they would live happily ever after.” The old bat smiled bitterly. “But he broke it off and married me instead. Then, like a fool, he changed his mind. He said I was cold and wicked and that I only married him so Winifred couldn’t have him.”

  “Was he right?” I asked.

  She huffed. “I suppose. He ran to her house in the dead of night, begging for forgiveness. God smiled on me and sent a bolt of lightning. Winifred saw the whole thing from her bedroom window. She lost her mind after that. Fled England, never to return.”

  “I don’t understand any of it,” said Lady Amelia, her face a track of tears and sorrow. “What happened to poor Rebecca?”

  “She put on that wretched necklace,” said Lady Elizabeth.

  “You think that is what killed her?” asked Lady Amelia.

  “I know it,” barked the old woman. “That diamond is cursed. It must be!”

  And of course it made sense. Rebecca had put on the necklace and dropped dead. And yet . . .

  “Forgive me, Lady Elizabeth,” I said, “but while I was on the ship coming from France, I put on the necklace. I promised I wouldn’t, but I did. And, well, it didn’t kill me.”

  “I wish that it had!” hissed Lady Elizabeth. She rose from her seat, and her eyes blazed with life and fire and hatred. She pointed her cane at me. “You did this! You visited this curse upon us. I won’t forget, Miss Pocket. Take that wretched stone. Take it and go!”

  Matilda’s eyes fixed upon the Clock Diamond. “But, Grandmother, the stone is much too valuable to give away to a maid. I wouldn’t wear it, of course, but it would be a wonderful addition to my collection.”

  Lady Elizabeth regarded her granddaughter with a mixture of admiration and disgust. “I sometimes wonder if you have a heart, Matilda,” she said.

  Matilda said nothing but gazed darkly at the stone.

  Lady Elizabeth used her cane to hook the necklace and lift it from the table. It dangled there, right in front of my face. “You and this instrument of suffering deserve each other, Miss Pocket. Take it, pack your bag, and get out of this house. You are not welcome here.”

  “Of course, Lady Elizabeth,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  And so I did.

  Before I left Butterfield Park I passed by Rebecca’s door on my way downstairs. Her room looked as if a tempest had swept through it. The floor was a battlefield of scattered clocks. They no longer ticked as one. The room had lost its heartbeat. I wondered what they would do with all of those clocks now that she was gone. Bury them. Or throw them away. So I took one. It was small. Silver. Badly dented and scratched. With a brass top. I slipped it into my carpetbag and walked out of the great house for the very last time.

  It is possible I heard the Duchess of Trinity’s ghostly cackle as I closed the front door. It is possible she sounded thoroughly pleased with herself. But if I did hear it, I certainly did not show it. My days of talking with vengeful ghouls were behind me.

  The rising sun dappled the tulips and roses, causing the petals to sparkle. I would take the train back to London. I would start over. I had one thousand pounds in my pocket. But what of my one thousand questions? They nipped at me like termites upon a log. Yes, I had some answers. I now understood the Duchess’s role in this dark mystery. She had used me from the very beginning, to get revenge upon Lady Elizabeth. All that mattered to her was killing the old bat’s pride and joy—Matilda. But instead, Rebecca had been the victim.

  And my mother, dead and forsaken. Who was she? And how did we come to be in that awful house? And what did Miss Frost know that she wasn’t telling me? And what of Miss Always and her belief that I was the Dual she had been searching for?

  Yes, I had answers. But not enough of them. Not nearly enough.

  19

  I had a ticket to London in my hand. The train wasn’t due for thirty minutes, so I sat down and waited. It seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do.

  “I trust you have the stone?”

  Miss Frost was at the end of the platform. A dark horse stood grazing beyond the station gate. She walked across the platform and sat down beside me. “The Clock Diamond, Miss Pocket—do you have it?”

  I nodded my head. “It killed Rebecca. She shriveled up like some sort of monstrous raisin.”

  “That is what it does,” said Miss Frost crisply. If she was sorry to learn of Rebecca’s death, her face betrayed nothing. But then she said, “Foolish girl! I told her not to put it on.”

  “I wore the diamond,” I said. “I put it on, just like Rebecca.”

  “I know,” said Miss Frost.

  “Then why am I alive and she is dead?”

  Miss Frost lifted the hem of her dress and pulled a small knife from her left boot. She grabbed my arm. Pushed up the sleeve of my dress. The knife hovered above my flesh. Naturally, I tried to pull away. But Miss Frost had an iron grip on me.

  “What on earth are you doing, you mad cow?” I snapped.

  Miss Frost pressed the sharp blade into my skin, slicing a straight line across my forearm. The cut wasn’t terribly long. But it was most effective. I stared at the wound, but I didn’t cry out. Not when the cut drew no blood. Not even when, in its place, gray mist coiled up from the wound like smoke from a tiny chimney. In moments the smoke faded. Then the wound healed over as if it was never there to begin with.

  I simply said, “Am I dead?”

  “When the Clock Diamond is worn, it is fatal,” said Miss Frost calmly. “No one has ever survived it before. That is what makes you of such interest, Miss Pocket.”

  So I was dead. Or something like it. It was a most peculiar feeling.

  “Rebecca pushed you down the stairs to prove that you could be hurt,” explained Miss Frost. “To prove that what I had told her about you wasn’t true.”

  My mind was seething with slippery questions. Could I die? Would I get any older or be forever twelve (which would be violently inconvenient)? Would I continue to see ghosts? Would I always be so hungry? Would I develop a ghostly glow like the Duchess of Trinity?<
br />
  Miss Frost seemed to read my mind. “For some reason, you have survived the stone. Why, I cannot say. Perhaps we will never know.”

  “If Rebecca knew what the Clock Diamond could do, why did she put it on?” I asked.

  “Rebecca believed the stone would lead her to the one person who really mattered—her mother. I tried to make her understand that your case was most unusual. That you only saw ghosts because you are, at least in part, a ghost yourself—but she would not listen.”

  A cloud passed over the sun, casting us in a kind of mournful shroud—more shadow than light. “Is Rebecca inside the stone?” I asked. “Is she trapped in there?”

  “The Clock Diamond isn’t a destination. It is a door.”

  “A door to where?”

  “My home—and Miss Always’s too. And before you ask, no, I will not discuss where I am from. The less you know, the safer you will be.”

  “Hideous creature!” I declared.

  Miss Frost smiled faintly.

  “If the stone is a door, why does it kill people?” I asked. “There must be a reason.”

  “The Shadow,” said Miss Frost.

  I frowned. “That silly plague Miss Always told me about?”

  “It haunts my homeland, killing all but the lucky few who are immune. Once infection sets in, nothing can be done. There is no treatment. Nothing . . . except for one thing.”

  “Nothing except for what, you monstrous woman?” I was baffled. Befuddled. Dumbstruck. What on earth was she talking about?

  “A very great woman by the name of Professor Peggotty Spring found a way to cross from my world into yours using the Clock Diamond,” explained Miss Frost. “She planned to bring back medicine to help our people.”

  “And did she?”

  “Yes.” Miss Frost closed her eyes. “But it did little good. The story is long and rather gruesome, but in the end the professor settled in England and began experimenting . . . finally discovering that the very vehicle which allowed her to cross over—the Clock Diamond—was the answer to her prayers. If worn by a person from this world, his or her life force would pass through the stone, creating a powerful healing force in mine. It is terribly complicated, but the facts are not—the one thing that could ease great suffering in my world, would cause great suffering in yours.”